This invention relates to reciprocating piston engines and more particularly to a piston engine that produces power with each stroke.
Steam locomotives had a valve system that fed steam to each side of the piston in the cylinder so that each reciprocating motion of the driving rod received steam power to turn the wheels. No other engine known has ever used both sides of the piston as a power stroke. Prior art pistons have only one end face that contacts the working fluid.
The steam exited the locomotive system in an open cycle.
The power takeoff of the steam locomotives was outside the engine itself, as was its piston rod and driving rod assembly.
Aircraft piston engines have dual spark plugs and ignition systems in only the cylinder heads for redundancy and backup purposes.
Two-stroke diesel engines, as for modern locomotives, are an efficient motive power source and represent state of the piston art. Only one side of the piston is used as an end face.
Some motorcycle engines have standard but opposing pistons that still place combustion on top of the pistons, the end face being away from the main working parts. Those working parts would be, among other necessary things, the crankshaft and/or other power takeoff elements.
Stirling engines, while using no internal combustion, use standard-type pistons to work the internal fluid.
The power takeoffs of prior art reciprocating engines are self-contained within the workings of the engines themselves. Prior art engines are woefully heavy for the power output.
Contrarily, the instant engine is highly efficient and effectively doubles the Horsepower output derived from each cylinder. It, too, is mainly a self-contained engine. Halving the number of cylinders to produce the same amount of Horsepower as prior art engines deliver, more than halves the engine weight and gives a significant increase in power-to-weight ratio than do prior art engines.
An object of the instant invention is to provide a piston engine that produces power with each stroke of the piston.
A further object of the instant invention is to make a xe2x80x9ctwo-strokexe2x80x9d engine into a one-stroke, or power stroke or double-power engine.
Another object of the instant invention is to at least double the number of power strokes of a prior art engine.
A still further object of the instant invention is to provide an engine capable of fulfilling the mission needs of a wide variety of engine applications.